Xebia Helps a Leading Dutch Energy Consultancy Set its AI Course

The Client

ZICHT Consultants is a Dutch management consultancy focused on asset-intensive industries, including the energy and infrastructure sectors. With extensive expertise in the construction, energy, infrastructure, and transport industries, ZICHT excels in process improvements, asset management, change implementations, and project and program management.

The Challenge: Transforming AI Curiosity into a Clear Adoption Plan

ZICHT's challenge was one of direction and not motivation. The company’s partners were enthusiastic about AI reshaping the energy sector and had already done some projects, but lacked a structured view of how to scale.

Their thinking spanned three areas:

That last question was the most important, as it impacts ZICHT's business model, since the firm's value comes from deep human domain expertise rather than technology delivery. Deciding how far to push AI into their service offering directly affects go-to-market strategy, not just their internal tooling.

The Solution: Executive Strategy Workshop Designed for Future Success

ZICHT wanted an AI ambition that was concrete, realistic, and rooted in real hands-on experience, and made a deliberate choice not to bring in one of the reputed management consultants. The company decided to partner with Xebia because of its technical credibility, excellent track record in AI delivery, and structured workshop methodology, tailored to ZICHT rather than rolled out as a one-size-fits-all program. Xebia decided to run a tailor-made executive strategy workshop with ZICHT’s partners and executive directors, designed to translate the company’s broad ambition into a concrete, shared AI vision across the three focus areas. The scope was reshaped along the way: the engagement began as an open vision workshop, but when ZICHT pushed for something more applied, Xebia condensed it into a single, tightly focused afternoon that took the leadership group purposefully through to an outcome

The engagement followed Xebia's standard format for executive AI workshops, run over 2 to 3 weeks:

Xebia mapped ZICHT's own framing of AI (daily work, operations, client products) onto Xebia's broader AI capability model. Read more

Two Xebia consultants, Steven Nooijen and Lennert de Weerd, led the session together: one focused on strategic and business-model framing, the other on AI and technology depth. Around 6-7 people from ZICHT participated in the workshop, including 4 partners.

<em>You notice very quickly that this is not a generic workshop rolled out the same way for every client. Xebia took the time to get to know our business first, and built the session around the AI model we already had.</em>

Thijs van Hulst 

Co-founder, ZICHT Consultants

The Results: One Ambition Statement for Future AI Decisions

ZICHT's partners were highly curious, enthusiastic, and eager to adopt AI, which made the session energetic and collaborative. ZICHT's founding partners aligned on a single board-level AI direction, replacing disconnected lines of thinking. The result was a clear articulation of what AI needs to mean for the business across the three pillars, translated to a level where it can subsequently be broken down into concrete actions. This gives ZICHT's partners a shared, board-level reference point for future AI decisions, rather than three disconnected initiatives.

ZICHT has since taken the ambition statement forward as the framework for its AI development and is working on the next stage of implementation. Internally, the reception was notable: feedback on the workshop was positive across the leadership group.

ZICHT also sees external value in the position itself: having a clear, board-level AI direction lets the firm show clients and prospective hires that it is engaging with AI proactively rather than reactively, a differentiator in a sector where domain expertise, not technology, has traditionally been the currency.

Looking Ahead

ZICHT plans to turn this ambition into a concrete roadmap next, with Xebia positioned as a likely partner. Discussions around a possible joint go-to-market for energy-sector clients, in which ZICHT would provide energy-domain expertise alongside Xebia’s AI expertise, is also on the cards.

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